It was harder than I’d expected to wait through the next two weeks.

I was used to this schedule by now. I understood that I only got to see Sean twice a month, and I’d been living my life around that reality for months now.

Something seemed to have changed though.

I didn’t know what it was, and there was certainly no reason for it. It had been very clear the last time I got together with Sean that he wanted to continue with the same rules and limitations we’d set at the beginning. We were holding with our contract.

My mind understood this very clearly.

The rest of me had trouble remembering.

I thought about him a lot. Too much. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and imagine what we’d say to each other the next time we got together. I’d wish he was sitting next to me on my couch so we could talk about the show I was watching. I wondered what he was doing at odd moments of the day. I’d take out his phone number and look at it, wishing I could just call him up.

This was stupid. This was foolish. This was something I knew wasn’t good for me.

I just couldn’t help it.

Maybe it was because, up until now, I’d had my feelings for John to protect me, and I no longer had that safety zone around the deepest parts of myself. I knew I couldn’t have a real relationship with Sean. It wasn’t only something he didn’t want. It was also something he’d gone to great lengths to ensure would never happen. We had a contract that guaranteed we’d never be closer than we were right now.

There was no fairy-tale conclusion at the end of this road for me. I’d fooled myself once that a man was something other than he was, and I wasn’t going to fool myself again. Not with Sean. Not with anyone.

But just because your mind knows something is true, doesn’t mean the rest of you wants to believe it.

The worst part of it was that I was horny all the time.

All. The. Time.

I woke up wanting to have sex and went to bed wanting to have sex, and I gave my vibrator more of a workout than it had ever had before. Even if I could keep the emotional components of this relationship in perspective, two weeks still seemed too long to wait to have sex with Sean again.

All this to explain why I was excited and impatient and on edge as I rode up the hotel elevator on Wednesday evening two weeks later.

I was already turned on—without even having set foot in the room yet—and I didn’t know how much longer I could wait.

When I got to the hallway, I knocked on the door and had to grit my teeth as I waited for endless seconds before Sean opened it.

“Finally,” I said when he swung the door open to stand before me in another expensive suit.

Yes, I know that greeting wasn’t very polite since Sean had taken less than a minute to respond to my knock. But it felt like I’d been waiting an eternity to get here again.

If Sean was going to be his normal cool, ironic self today and give me a lofty eyebrow arch, I was going to have no choice but to rip his clothes off.

He reached out with one hand and grabbed the front of my suit jacket, pulling me into the room and closing the door with his other hand.

“You’re two minutes late,” he said, a rough edge to his voice.

Then he was kissing me hard.

So I guess we were both in the same mood.

As he kissed me, he walked me over to the foot of the bed, and that was as far as we got. His mouth devoured mine, and he tugged impatiently at my clothes so he could get his hands underneath, and I fell backward onto the edge of the mattress with a little squeal of surprise.

Sean was on top of me, pushing up my skirt and parting my legs. His body was hot and heavy and hard—all of him was hard—so he’d obviously been turned on before I arrived, just like I had been.

We were so eager we hardly needed any foreplay. Sean managed to get me out of my jacket, and then he pushed my top up so he could reach my breasts. He gave one of my nipples a little bite that made me cry out as a jolt of pleasure sliced through me. Then one of his hands was in my underwear, feeling me intimately.

When he discovered I was already ready for him, he grabbed a condom and fumbled to tear it open.

As he did so, I worked on undoing his belt and trousers so I could free his erection.

So it was literally less than two minutes since I’d walked in when he was pulling my thighs apart, moving aside my panties, and edging himself inside me.

I cried out helplessly at the penetration and held on to fistfuls of the suit coat he still wore as he started to thrust.

His eyes never left my face as he took me hard and fast. He was flushed and slightly damp from perspiration, and his green eyes were hot and fierce and possessive. It felt like my head and my heart would explode. I was feeling so much. Like I’d been waiting for this for so long.

He fucked me until I came, and then he pulled out and turned me over onto my hands and knees on the bottom of the bed. We were both still wearing most of our clothes, but we still didn’t have the patience to take them off. He positioned himself behind me and slid inside me again, this time from behind.

He grunted low in his throat as he started to fuck me again, and I was making sobbing sounds that were loud and helpless and would have been embarrassing in a different situation.

I lowered my head to the bedding to smother my cries as I came a second time, and then I pressed my cheek against the bed, panting desperately, when he slowed down his motion.

“You want more?” he rasped.

“Yeah. Yeah, please. I need more.” I’d been waiting too long for this, and I hadn’t nearly had enough yet. “I need so much more.”

So he leaned forward, changing his position and bracing himself on the bed. I was still bent over with only my bottom in the air. His motion was hard and fast and almost rough, but it was exactly what I wanted to feel. The sensations spiraled up into an intense, pleasurable plateau but didn’t really break, so I kept moaning and whimpering for a long time with no respite.

My body was shaking and drenched in sweat when he finally slowed down and pulled out. When there seemed to be a pause, I found the energy to look back and saw he was checking the condom.

“Is it okay?” I asked. We used condoms in addition to my birth control because we wanted to be extra careful.

“Yeah.” He nodded his assurance, even as he climbed off the bed. “But we’ve given it a workout so I think I’ll go ahead and switch it out.”

My body was pulsing and felt swollen all over—not just between my legs—but I still chuckled at his dry tone. When he’d changed condoms, he turned me over onto my back and knelt between my thighs. “You still good?” he asked.

I nodded and sniffed and smiled at him, wiping some of the sweat off my face with the back of my hand. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me tonight, but I can’t seem to get enough.”

“Me either.”

I was so glad to know it wasn’t just me. It eased a tension in my chest, even as my heartbeat started to accelerate as he lifted my bottom to position himself at my entrance.

He held me that way as he started to fuck me again, and he seemed to enjoy the way my body shook and jiggled with his motion.

“This is what you want?” he rasped, his eyes moving from my face to where he was pumping into me.

I babbled out a repetition of yeah and please, fisting my hands in the bedding.

“This is what you need?”

“Yeah. I need it so much. So, so, so much.” I hardly recognized my own voice.

“Only I can give it to you?”

Maybe at another time, I’d have had a problem with this sentiment, but at the moment it felt exactly right. Only Sean could make me feel this way. Only Sean could quench this desperate thirst. “Yeah. Only you. Only you.” I cried out loudly as my body clamped down hard in pleasure. “Oh God, I need more!”

I was still wearing my shoes, and for some reason it made me feel extra-naughty. I came two more times in that position, and I was still begging for more.

But Sean had finally reached the end of his control. He’d repositioned himself one last time, bending my legs up toward my chest and then bracing himself on straightened arms above me.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, strangling on more cries of pleasure.

“That’s right, baby,” he said, his face just as hot and wet as mine. “Come for me one more time.”

I didn’t know what was happening to my body, but it was still shamelessly rocking beneath him, reaching for more satisfaction. “I need it from you,” I mumbled, tossing my head helplessly. “I need it from you so bad.”

“I know you do. One more time for me. Give me all of it. I want everything from you.”

Either his words or his motion sent me spiraling again. My release was completely uninhibited and way too loud, but I couldn’t muffle it in this position.

I was still trying to process the feelings when Sean fell out of rhythm at last. He started pushing into me with hard, jerky thrusts. He was still grunting, although louder than before. It sounded like he was saying, “Everything… Ash… everything… you’re everything,” with a hard push on each word.

He froze for a moment, his features contorted dramatically, as his climax hit him. Then he shook and moaned and rolled his hips as he worked through the spasms of his release.

He rolled over onto his back, and we both collapsed side by side for a long time.

I couldn’t remember ever being so hot and tired and perfectly satisfied in my whole life.

I actually tried to recall another time I’d felt like this, and there was nothing.

Nothing that came close to equaling this.

When my throat finally felt like it could form words again, I turned my head to discover that Sean was looking at me.

“That was…” I panted for breath. “That was…”

“Yeah.” It seemed like he knew what I was trying to say.

“I don’t think I can move.”

“I know I can’t.” His gaze still held mine, and his lips tilted up in a smile.

I smiled back.

Eventually we found the energy to get up and take care of business. We got into the shower together and helped clean each other off, but it was comforting rather than sexy. It was going to be a while before I could get the momentum of sex going again. I liked the feel of his hands stroking down my wet body though. I liked how his body felt under my palms.

He pulled me into a hug under the shower spray and held me like that for several minutes, and that felt even better.

I hadn’t been careful about my hair in the shower, so it was wet when I got out. Since I didn’t want it hanging like a wet mop around me all evening, I combed it out and braided it into two braids.

I look better in two than in one.

After Sean called down for room service, we both stretched out on the bed in our pajamas, and he pulled me over against him.

I was still too exhausted to do much talking, but the silence felt nice, comfortable, intimate.

When I finally shifted positions so I could look into his face, I saw he was gazing at me.

I smiled. “That was… something.”

“Yeah, it was.”

My cheeks were still flushed from my exertion, so I figured he couldn’t tell I was blushing right now. “I’ve never… I mean, I’ve had good sex before, and it’s always been good with you, but I’ve never… I’ve never been like that before.”

“Yeah.”

I darted my eyes up, but I couldn’t tell from his expression whether he was agreeing that I’d never been like that before or admitting that he’d never been that way either. “I don’t know what got into me.”

“Yeah.”

It would have been nice if he’d add more to the conversation than that, but Sean just wasn’t the confessional type.

When I looked back at this face, his expression had changed.

“What?” I demanded.

“So you didn’t have sex like that with the jackass?” His voice was light, almost teasing, but his eyes told me he really wanted to know.

I sucked in a breath. He was still thinking about the way I hadn’t told him last time whether I’d actually slept with John. He hadn’t let it go yet, which meant he was taking it seriously.

The truth was, I liked it. I liked that whether or not I slept with John was important with him.

Narrowing my eyes at him, I murmured, attempting to sound cool, “I thought we discussed last time that it was none of your business.”

“That’s what you said, but I didn’t believe it.” The lilt to his voice was irresistible.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Despite my fatigue, I needed to pee again, so I hauled myself up.

But before I walked away, I looked down on Sean and said, “I’m going to give you a gift, because you gave me so many orgasms just now. Not that you deserve it, and not that it’s any of your business.”

He blinked.

I leaned over and kissed the corner of his mouth. Then I whispered into his ear, “I didn’t have sex with the jackass.”

I started to walk away, but Sean grabbed my hand and pulled me back. “You didn’t?”

“No. I didn’t.”

He was smiling now, and the warmth in his eyes took my breath away. “Why not?”

“It’s not that you’ve spoiled me for other men, so don’t get a swelled head. I would have slept with him, but we just didn’t get to that point. We only made out a few times. I figured out who he was before we got into bed.”

I got up again because I did need to pee, but I could feel Sean smiling at my back as I made my way to the bathroom.

***

We both got steaks again that evening—I got mine with the parmesan risotto—and I greatly enjoyed my meal.

But I felt so tired afterward that I had to get back into the bed. Sean came with me. He seemed tired too.

We lay together in contented exhaustion for a long time.

I was thinking about a lot of things, and finally one of them made me speak.

I crafted my words intentionally before I voiced them. “You didn’t tell me if you’d ever had sex like that before.”

I made it a statement of fact rather than a question. Technically, according to our contract, I wasn’t supposed to ask him about his previous sexual relationships. Of course, he wasn’t supposed to ask me either, and he had no qualms about doing so.

It was only fair that he tell me something too.

When I risked a glance at him, I saw that he was studying my face soberly.

I frowned. “You didn’t tell me. I told you, but you didn’t tell me. Is that fair?”

“No,” he admitted softly. “It’s not fair.”

I waited. If he didn’t tell me anything right now, if he didn’t open up even a little bit, the way I’d opened up with him, then I was going to have to take several steps back.

I would have no choice.

I hadn’t intended this conversation to be a test, but in some ways it had turned out to be one.

Sean let out a long, slow breath, his shoulders relaxing slightly. His head was propped up on two pillows. “I’ve had great sex before,” he said at last, the words almost hesitant. “But I can’t remember it ever being… like that.”

A rush of pleasure washed over me—emotional rather than physical. I didn’t know what to say.

“Sometimes I feel guilty,” he murmured, his eyes now focused on an empty spot in the air.

“For what?” I knew it had to do with Lara. What else would he feel guilty about?

“I wonder if I was holding back on her in some way. If I wasn’t giving her everything.”

I swallowed hard in the silence that followed his words.

Without question, he was holding back on me. He wasn’t giving me anything close to everything. He wasn’t even giving me a real relationship.

But he wasn’t engaged to me. He’d never claimed to give me anything except sex. My situation and Lara’s were entirely different, and I had no right to compare them.

I thought about his words and could understand them. It must hurt him to realize that he’d been with me sexually in a way he hadn’t been with her.

“I loved her,” he went on, softly, hoarsely, as if he were talking to himself. “We had a great sex life. But…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. I really wanted him to, but it didn’t feel right to force him.

I scooted closer to him so I could put a hand on his chest. “People are different at different stages of their lives. I don’t think you can feel guilty about being a different person now than you were then. Just think of all you’ve lived through since then. Anyone would be different. Anyone would have grown and changed.”

He turned to meet my eyes, and I saw the tightness in him soften.

I must have said the right thing.

Then his expression changed and he smiled at me. “So you didn’t have sex with the jackass after all.”

I gasped and gave him a swat on the chest. “I never should have told you that. Especially since you’ll never tell me about your scores of sexual conquests.” The words were light and teasing and intended to bring us back from the emotional precipice of the moment before.

I certainly didn’t expect Sean to frown as he did in response. “What?”

I frowned back at him with a little shrug. “It was just a joke. I’m saying I don’t expect you to talk about other women.”

“You said scores of…”

I swallowed. “It was a joke, Sean.”

His eyebrows were still lowered. “Do you think I’m some sort of player?”

“No,” I replied quickly. “Not now. Not at all.”

“But before? You think I was ever a player?”

I was about to offer an immediate rebuttal, but the words stopped in my throat. The truth was I did assume he’d gotten around—not presently and certainly not when he’d been with Lara, but he was rich, sexy, handsome, and free. It seemed obvious that he would have been with a lot of women in the past.

Sean said slowly, “I’ve been with nine women in my life. Is that a lot? Does that make me a player?” He was utterly serious, as if he really wanted to know what I thought about him.

I grew very still.

Nine.

It was more than me but not significantly so. I couldn’t believe his number was so low.

Then I felt guilty about making assumptions based on nothing but his superficial qualities.

“I’ve only been with two in the past five years,” Sean added very softly. “That’s not a lot, is it?”

I inhaled sharply as I realized that meant Lara and me.

He hadn’t used the Wednesday night contract with any other women. Just me.

It felt like my whole insides were shaking helplessly, and I had no idea what to say.

But Sean was clearly waiting for an answer.

“No,” I finally managed to say. “It’s not a lot.”

His eyes held mine. “Are you… disappointed?”

“No,” I murmured, scooting over in the bed to give him a little kiss. “I’m not disappointed.”

Disappointed wasn’t even close to what I was feeling.

There might have been fireworks going off in my head.

He looked like he was going to say something else, but there was a knock on the door just then.

I sat up. “What’s that?”

“That’s room service,” Sean said, groaning slightly as he rolled off the bed.

“But our dinners already came.”

“This is for after dinner.”

I had no idea what it was, and I couldn’t see the door from where I was sitting on the bed. So I stared in astonishment when Sean wheeled in a tray with a bottle of champagne and long-stemmed strawberries dipped in chocolate.

Sean cocked one eyebrow and looked almost sheepish. “I thought we needed to reward ourselves after our exertions earlier. Too clichéd?”

I squealed and clapped my hands with naked excitement. “It’s perfect. I was hoping for dessert.”

This was more than dessert, and it felt undeniably romantic as we drank the champagne and ate the strawberries together in bed.

Especially after what he’d admitted to me earlier. I was the only woman he’d been with since Lara.

But I was smarter than to fall for silly daydreams anymore.

I wasn’t going down that road again.

To get myself back on the right track, I chatted to him about normal, non-intimate things—namely, work and my sister’s wedding, which was coming up the weekend after next.

After I’d told him about the current crisis with the wedding flowers, Sean said lightly, “You don’t seem like you’re looking forward to the wedding.”

“I’m not,” I admitted. “I’m happy enough for my sister, but the wedding just fills me with dread. There’s just so much stress involved, and all my old school friends will be there, and…”

“And what?” he prompted when I trailed off.

“And I won’t even have a date.” I made a face, wishing I hadn’t mentioned that as soon as the words came out.

“A date?”

“Yes, a date. I’ll admit it. I had all these daydreams about going with John, and all my old friends seeing me with this great guy.” I shook my head. “I’m not saying I regret ending it with him. He wasn’t the guy I wanted. But still… I’m not a completely insecure person. I mean, I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I like my job, and I like myself, and I like my life. But there’s always this little twinge when it comes to seeing people you used to know. You want them to… to see you doing really well. And in the case of a wedding, it means having a date.”

Sean didn’t appear to be laughing at me, although a smile was playing on the corners of his mouth. “So go with someone else.”

“Who exactly? I’m not exactly overrun with romantic partners, you know.”

“Go with anyone. It doesn’t have to be someone you have romantic designs on.”

“Right. So I’m just supposed to go up to my new neighbor or a random guy at work and say, Hey, I know we barely know each other and don’t take this the wrong way, but will you please go with me to a family wedding where everyone is going to assume we’re a couple?” I gave a huff of amusement.

Sean frowned. “Who’s your new neighbor? Some guy you’re interested in?”

“No! And would you please stay on topic. My point is that I’m not in the position to ask anyone to be my date to the wedding. What would you do if a woman approached you with that particular offer?”

“It would depend on who it was.”

“Don’t hedge. You know very well that I’m right. That kind of date would scare any guy off.”

“It might not.”

“Yes, it would.” I really wasn’t thinking. I was into the conversation and wanted to prove my point. “Say we didn’t have a contract preventing it and I asked you to go to the wedding with me. You’d run for the hills before I could get the words out.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Yes, you would.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I’ll go to the wedding with you if you want me to.”

I stared at him. My mouth dropped open. I froze in place for several seconds. “What?” I finally forced out.

He was frowning again, like I was making a big deal out of nothing. “I said I’d go to the wedding with you. Why do you look so flabbergasted?”

“Because it’s in our contract that going to social events together is against the rules.”

He made an impatient face. “I’m not asking you out on a date. I’m just saying that if you need someone to go with you to the wedding, I’d go with you. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that people would see us there together and assume we were dating. All my friends would… They’d assume you were my boyfriend.”

“What do I care about that? I assure you I’m capable of brushing off nosy questions.” He sounded perfectly cool, perfectly unconcerned, as if what he was saying wasn’t shaking the very foundations of my world.

“And you’re kind of well known, you know,” I continued, trying to even out my tone but not being very successful. “What if it ended up in the gossip columns that you were dating some nobody?”

“Are you planning to have the paparazzi at your sister’s wedding?”

“No. But the story could still get out.”

“They write stories all the time about me dating everyone from Queen Elizabeth to Hillary Clinton.”

Despite my distraction, I couldn’t help but giggle at this.

“And don’t call yourself a nobody,” he went on in a different tone. “I don’t like that.”

“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant. And I’m not saying you need to take me as your date. It’s no big deal either way to me. If you want a date, I can go with you. If not, then don’t worry about it.”

I was still staring at him with wide eyes, but he really seemed like he meant what he said.

This wasn’t an invitation to change the terms of our relationship.

He wasn’t initiating a romance with me.

He was just being a nice guy.

As I thought, he kept his eyes on my face, and there was a slight tension in his shoulders that belied his casual expression.

Finally I said, “All right. If you really don’t mind, it would be nice to have a date. You as a date.”

He gave a little nod, and the tension in his shoulders relaxed. “Good then. It’s the Saturday after next?”

“Yeah. It’s outside the city but not far, so it should only be a few hours of your time.”

“No worries.”

He could say no worries. He wasn’t the one who was going to attend a family wedding with Sean Doyle as her date.

I had no idea what to expect, but it made me jittery from my head to my toes.

***

We finished most of the champagne, and the alcohol made us sleepy, so we ended up falling asleep without having sex again.

At about three in the morning, I woke up in the dark room to find that Sean was practically on top of me. He was asleep, so he must have rolled over unconsciously. His body was as hot as a radiator, and he was hard in his pants.

I could feel him pressing into my belly.

I shifted beneath him uncomfortably, and my motion must have woken him up. He mumbled groggily and started to kiss me.

This seemed like a perfectly reasonable activity to me, so I kissed him back. We were both half-asleep as we fumbled together, and he ended up buried inside me. My legs and arms were wrapped around him, and I clung to him and rocked beneath him.

Sean was still mumbling, and my head was still too clouded with sleep to decipher what he was saying, but it felt soft and sweet and intimate and natural, finding each other in the dark this way.

He pumped his hips against me and buried his face in my neck, and it didn’t take him very long to come.

I didn’t come at all, but I loved it anyway.

We stayed tangled up together as we fell back to sleep, and I didn’t want to let him go.

I didn’t ever want to let him go.

I wondered if second best had ever felt like this before.